


Family

by fid_gin



Series: The Loved 'verse [25]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-20 00:48:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1490539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fid_gin/pseuds/fid_gin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor ponders the strange turns his life has taken as he takes a midnight stroll.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family

**Author's Note:**

> Original post date: 10/31/2009
> 
> Last one. Yep, I did it. It's _Loved_ 'verse babyfic. Wellll, pregnancy fic, actually. There may be the odd installment to come which would fall earlier in the series, but this is more or less The End. And they all lived happily ever after. :)

When your companions lie sleeping...when the last sigh has been sighed, the last gasp gasped and the last hushed words and giggles exchanged and you've held them until they've drifted into slumber, you get up and go for a walk.

Your ship is so silent in these moments when it's just you. No tinkling laughter from Rose or lovingly cheeky comments from the part-human Doctor. You walk the halls, listening to this silence, unable to imagine how you spent so many years surrounded by it. Incapable, now, of remembering life before joy.

You think about Rose, so different since you first met her. She's seen things her species was never meant to see, experienced things which might have driven a lesser human mad. But she's brilliant, and underneath her changed exterior she is every bit as warm and kind and similar to that young girl you walked with across the grounds of the Powell Estate, carrying a plastic arm, and you think each moment that passes you love her a little more than the last.

You think about the other Doctor and wonder when exactly you stopped thinking of him as some extension of yourself, some cosmic accident, and started thinking of him as a complete other man. Another human, and another Time Lord, rolled into one. An _equal_ , which you did not realize you so desperately needed until he was here.

You remember the others, the many faces and voices which have filled these halls – the ones who've shared the strange and beautiful life you currently enjoy, and the ones who departed long before it began. You wish Rose could have met them. Wellll...some of them. You wish they could have met the other Doctor as he exists now, different from the Doctor they knew, and better in many ways. You wish they could see how he's changed your life.

You wonder what your ship will be like months from now with an additional passenger. A small, impossible passenger you never dreamed fate or destiny or God or whatever would ever be so kind as to bestow upon you again. You almost drop to your knees at the thought of it, but instead you just keep walking. You always just...keep walking. Keep running.

You fear for Rose, for the baby. For the physical implications of time travel on a human pregnancy, for the fact that it's not an entirely human pregnancy anyway, for everything you don't know about what happens next. Time is in flux and none of this is fixed, and it both intrigues and terrifies you not to know the future or your place in it. But at this moment there are two, actually three, people whom you love and who love you back sleeping in your bed, and that thought makes you so happy you think your poor old hearts might burst.

After many hours you return to your bed, sliding in behind the nude body of the other Doctor and placing a kiss on his freckled shoulder, draping your arm over him and reaching for Rose where she lies spooned against his front. You spread your fingertips over the side of her swollen belly and she mumbles happily in her sleep and scoots backward, attempting to get even closer to the two identical bodies behind her. That small, unfinished mind inside of her reaches out to yours. You have confessed to your double that you have no idea if these early signs of telepathy mean that technically you are the father, or if it is a product of his mostly dormant Gallifreyan DNA, and you've both agreed that it hardly matters. Either way, it's yours – both of yours.

“I don't deserve this,” you silently tell your unborn child. Smiling, you add: “And I love it.” And somewhere in the crack in time in which you've parked your TARDIS, you finally fade off into a rare and welcome sleep.


End file.
